The Indianapolis Radio Club Newsletter Founded 1914 “The oldest continuously operating Amateur Radio Club in the United States” [][][]October 2007 Newsletter (ammended) Upcoming Meetings: []November 9: Meteor Scatter, High Speed C.W., Harry Wiliford, WB9IIV []December 14: Holiday Dinner Meeting, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra Speaker []Note: IRC individual members paid up by the November meeting will be furnished one meal per membership. Paid up family memberships will be entitled to 2 dinners. []January 11: Annual Chili Cookoff [][][]Highlights of the October 12, 2007 meeting: [] Chuck Crist W9IH, Ron Cooper WB9DKL and Tom Chance K9XV started setup for the first annual Antenna Shoot out at 6:00PM in the west parking lot of the ITC. A calibrated HP “Selective Receiver” was setup with a large multi-turn antenna pick-up were setup to make the actual measurements. The competition start promptly at 6:30PM and 7 contestents brought there mobile vertical antennas for 80 meters. The antennas were tested at a distance of approx. 100 feet at a power of 25 watts and at the frequency of 3.806 MHz. Testing continued till the beginning of the 7:00 PM meeting. [][]Tom Chance, President started the meeting at 7:30PM with a roll call of all attendees. Approx. 41 people were in attendance. []The results of the first antenna shoot-out were presented by Ron Cooper WB9DKL. The winner was John Lee-W9GRE. He was given a canned ham. Dave Jarvis ((2nd) recvieved a sardine can of chicken). Steve Wendt KB9RDS was 3rd. Thanks to all that participated. We will do it again. For more info see the IRC website (on air link). []Tom Chance announced the next two meetings for November and December. - November will be on the topic of Meteor Scatter by Harry WB9IIV. -The December meeting will feature Hugh Resnick, with a presentation about the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra at the Christmas Dinner Dec14th. []The announcement was made that every member needs to be current on their membership dues to be eligible for the free dinner. []Jerry – KC9DTB – made an announcement that he will be delivering a yacht to the Caribbean the first week in November. He will be posting frequencies and days on the IRC webpage. He believes at this time he will be working 14.300 and 50.125 starting on November 5th depending on weather conditions. []Chuck W9IH made an announcement that the USS Indianapolis ships event was a success and was given the top award by the USS New Jersey for most contacts. Congratulations to all who helped in the event. The next one will be in 2 years when the survivors return to Indy. []Jim Rinehart outlined that he needed pictures from your youth to present at the January and February meeting for the old time radio presentation. Please provide pictures as soon as you can so he can scan the photos for a Powerpoint presentation. Help is needed from the membership to begin the nomination process for next year. []Tom Chance K9XV outlined the W9DUU Technology Grant award to the audience. It was to reflect qualities of Paul Bohrer W9DUU. Terms like “Innovation” and “Community” were used to describe the award. The first award was given to the Indianapolis Carmel Experimenters (ICE). Bill K9YDO and Dale WB9YCZ were present the award and were very touched by the award and the check for $250. [][][]Bill K9YDO and Dale WB9YCZ began the presentation on D-STAR. This is a new digital radio protocol first implemented by ICOM in the early 2001 time frame. The ICE group currently has D-STAR systems on 444.125 and 147.39 on the WFBQ tower. Dale gave us on overview of the technology and how the call sign routing works. He demostrated the operation by connecting to Atlanta, Georgia connecting to Rick at the HRO store. Great presentation and many questions from the audience. Great participation. [](Editor’s note: Thanks to Tom Chance, K9XV, for supplying notes from the meeting.) [][]Ham Radio News: []INDIANAPOLIS VE Testing Schedule for the rest of 2007 This is the remaining schedule of testing sessions for the year 2007. Calling in advance to ensure testing availability is suggested but not mandatory. SPONSOR: Indianapolis Radio Club (W9JP) LOCATION: Indianapolis Training Center 2820 N. Meridian Street. CONTACTS: Liaison: Gale Wuollet, AA9WU (h) 317-849-8449 COORDINATING VEC: American Radio Relay League (ARRL) VEC, Inc. SCHEDULE: For Dates: Nov 3rd; Dec 1st All testing at the Indianapolis Training Center starts at 9:00 am and the last test will be administered no later than 11:00 a.m. [][]50TH ANNIVERSARY OF SPUTNIK Article by David Spoelstra, N9KT, about the 50th anniversary of Sputnik Fifty years ago, on October 4, 1957, America was stunned when the "Space Age" arrived unexpectedly. As Americans settled in to watch the premier of "Leave It to Beaver", the Soviet Union launched the world's first "artificial moon" - the satellite Sputnik.[1] I was born just after Sputnik, and it was hard for me to imagine just how big a deal this was in the United States until I read a number of accounts in QST and on the web. Weighing in at 184 pounds and slightly larger than a basketball, Sputnik flew over the s urface of the earth at 18,000 miles per hour at a height of 500 miles. It circled the globe every 96 minutes, and, most horribly, it flew unimpeded over the U.S. seven times a day.[2] The sound of its persistent "beep...beep...beep" was a constant reminder to the nation that it was up there, watching us from the high ground of space. David C. Hanson says in "Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Race" that, "The American response to Sputnik bordered on hysteria. The Chicago Daily News declared that if the Soviets “could deliver a 184-pound ‘moon' into a predetermined pattern 560 miles out into space, the day is not far distant when they could deliver a death-dealing warhead onto a predetermined target almost anywhere on the earth's surface. ” Newsweek magazine warned that several dozen Sputniks equipped with nuclear bombs could “spew their lethal fallout over the U.S. and Europe.”[3] Senator Lyndon Johnson envisioned a day when the Soviets would be “dropping bombs on us from space like kids dropping rocks onto cars from freeway overpasses – the control of space means the control of the world … that is the ultimate position: the position of total control over earth that lies in outer space”.[4] In "The Sputnik Challenge", Robert A. Divine says, "Physicist Edward Teller, the patron saint of the hydrogen bomb, stated that the United States had lost "a battle more important and greater than Pearl Harbor." and that "U.S. News & World Report said the launching ranked alongside nuclear fission in military importance."[5] Senator Mike Mansfield predicted that, “What is at stake is nothing less than our survival” and called for a "new Manhattan Project" to beat the Soviets in space.[1] & [17] Americans were so concerned that polling indicated that most were willing to see the national debt limit raised and forgo a proposed tax cut in order to get the United States into space.[1] A Gallup poll after the launch showed that sixty percent of Americans believed we would shortly be in a nuclear war.[6] WWV even shut down it's 20 MHz transmitter during evening overhead passes so Americans would have a clear frequency to hear the beeps on 20.005 MHz.[7] *Everyone* went out at night to see it fly over - "My father had the only pair of binoculars in the neighborhood. That night he led a crowd of us into a field not far from the house, and there, one by one, sharing the glasses, we saw it. . . to our eyes but a dot, a dim light smaller than the all but the faintest stars. But it was there. And it moved across our heavens and it dominated our world." -Jesse H. Moore V[8] The American Radio Relay League was contacted by The National Academy of Sciences to ask its 70,000 "ham" radio operator membership to help them track Sputnik. Within twenty-four hours, the hams responded with reports to the National Science Foundation.[1] Photos contrasting Chicago teenagers having fun jitterbugging while intense Russian teenagers studied math and physics were published in Life Magazine.[9] Engineering colleges were flooded with new students the following quarter.[10] On Wall Street, investors scrambled for stocks with a rocket connection and dumped everything else.[18] The Saturday following the launch, Daniel S. Goldin, who became the ninth NASA administrator, went to his college physics class. He vividly remembers that the professor had written "Sputnik Is Watching You" on the blackboard.[1] In a front-page story, the Times discussed speculation by scientists that the Soviets might detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon during a lunar eclipse to commemorate the Bolshevik Revolution. "The explosion of a bomb on a moon darkened briefly in eclipse would create an illumination on the earth brighter than the light of a full moon".[11] NBC's "Today" carried the Nov. 7 eclipse live, just in case anything happened.[12] Fear had risen so high from the launch that Michael Wright in "Here Comes Sputnik!" says that "Everyone on Johnston Island in the Pacific were issued sidearms to carry at all times." He also tells this story, "Jim Dawsons, science writer for the Star Tribune, wrote about how his third grade teacher was very nervous at the time. His school at Omaha, Neb., was just a few miles from the Air Force's Strategic Air Command headquarters. A fleet of F-100 fighters appeared in the sky coming right for the school. "MiGs!" the teacher shrieked. "MiGs!" She ran, hysterical, from the classroom, convinced they were about to be nuked by Russian fighter jets."[13] In Europe, the reaction towards Sputnik was much stronger. The launch of Sputnik clearly showed the Europeans that the Soviet Union had overtaken America in technological superiority which caused many countries to try to separate themselves from the United States.[14] The launch of Sputnik was so pivotal that even time became "pre-Sputnik" or "post-Sputnik". Soon after, the term "Space Age" was coined to refer to the new time. October 4th would simply become known as “Sputnik Night.”[15] As an NBC Radio announcer stated some 12 hours after Sputnik was launched, "Listen now, for the sound that forevermore separates the old from the new"[16]: http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/sputnk1b.wav To read further accounts about America's reaction to Sputnik, please follow some of the links in my footnotes below. Also, if any of you have any personal anecdotes about Sputnik, I would *love* to hear them. Please email them to me at n9kt@arrl.net -David Spoelstra, N9KT [1] Sputnik, The Shock of the Century by Paul Dickson, 2001. http://www.theglobalist.com/dbweb/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=2217 [2] Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Age by Roger D. Launius http://history.nasa.gov/sputnik/sputorig.html [3] Sputnik and the Origins of the Space Race by David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College http://www.vw.vccs.edu/vwhansd/HIS122/Space_Race.html [4] Johnson, Lyndon Baines. The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963-1969. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. [5] The Sputnik Challenge, Robert A. Divine, Oxford University Press, 1993 [6] Fever of '57 by Richard Edelman [7] Space Today Online, http://www.spacetoday.org/Satellites/Hamsats/Hamsats1990s/ Hamsats90sMiniSputnik.html and THE CF105 AVRO ARROW: SPUTNIK, http://va3kgb. ve3kbr.com/cf105/sputnik.htm [8] http://sputnikbook.net/comments.php [9] Shorting Sidhartha to Ground by Professor Joseph L. McCauley, March 11, 2007 http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/discussions/start-thread.html?ie=UTF8& ASIN=0471394203&authorID=A17E7K3MQ5KKR5&store=yourstore&reviewID= R3L0YS34TSKK8S&displayType=ReviewDetail [10] Sputnik - the facts. http://www.lonympics.co.uk/sputnik.htm [11] Scientists Wonder if Shot Nears Moon by Walter Sullivan, New York Times, November 5, 1957. http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/special/sputnik/sput-18.html [12] SPECULATORS AND TRAVELLERS THE POLITICAL CONSTRUCTION OF THE TOURIST IN THE KÁDÁR REGIME by Tibor Dessewffy, Cultural Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1 January 2002, pages 44 - 62 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a738574468~db=all [13] Here Comes Sputnik! by Paul Wright, http://www.batnet.com/~mfwright/sputnik.html [14] Sputnik is Launched. Edited by: Max Kholodenko, Researched by: Laura Green, Written by: Andy Beckstrom, March 26, 2000. Copyright 1996-1999 by David W. Koeller http://www.thenagain.info/webChron/Technology/Sputnik.html [15] Space Lecture #9, James Schombert, Department of Physics, University of Oregon http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/space/lectures/lec09.html [16] Red Moon Over the U.S., Time Magazine, October 14, 1957. http://www.time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862748,00.html [17] The Space Race as 'Primitive' Warfare by Milan Ilnyckyj, March 15, 2004 http://www.sindark.com/NonBlog/Articles/SpacePrim.pdf [18] Investors Buying Stock in Missiles, The New York Times, October 8, 1957 http://www.nytimes.com/partners/aol/special/sputnik/sput-14.html []REDEEM THOSE SOON-TO-EXPIRE IRCs If you have old US-issued International Reply Coupons (IRCs), they can still be redeemed, but you need to do it very soon. IRCs issued prior to 2002 (the old small ones) can be redeemed for one penny less than the issue (stamped) price, and must be redeemed by October 10. IRCs with an expiration date of December 31, 2006 can also be redeemed for one penny less than the issue price; these must be submitted to the post office by September 1, 2008. All non-US stamped IRCs issued prior to December 31, 2006 are non-redeemable. For more information, please refer to pages 28 and 57 in US Postal Bulletin 22215 http://www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/bulletin/2007/pb22215.pdf, dated September 13, 2007. Thanks to "The Daily DX" for this information. [][]IARU Region 2 Meeting Adopts EmComm Recommendations []The 16th IARU Region 2 General Assembly met in Brazil in mid-September. Actions taken included the establishment of a Region 2 Relief Fund to assist Region 2 Member-Societies whose club stations and buildings, including antenna systems, are damaged by natural disaster. A new MF-HF Band Plan was adopted to embrace emergency networks, among other things. The new band plan can be found at: http://www.iaru-regionii.org/ []Several recommendations from the Region 2 Working Group on Emergency Communications were adopted. These include establishing an Emergency Communications Committee that will be responsible to the Executive Committee for carrying out planning, training and the maintenance of equipment and personnel inventories for emergency assistance deployment. []NOTE FROM W9IH REGARDING MUSEUM SHIPS EVENT Ships event 2007 final totals for contact. and further results see: http://users.tellurian.com/freddie/nj2bb/ship-event.html No official announcement on the Top Ship Award; but the USS Indianapolis Mem. had the top score in the world.!!! 1634 confirmed. Top Five on the list: 1. USS Indy Curiser Mem ................ 1634 2. LS Huron Lght ship MI ...............1376 3. ITN Dandolo SUB Italy.................1226 4. STR Portland Stearnwheel TUG OR.......1039 5. USS Missouri Battleship Pearl harbor...848 Great job for all the USS Indianpolis OTA participants; Thanks&73;Chuck Crist- W9IH []AMATEUR RADIO AND VOLUNTEER RECOGNITION NOMINATION DEADLINE END OF OCTOBER Nominations are due by October 31 for The Amateur Radio & Volunteer Recognition Night, to be held December 5th, 2007 at 7pm ,at the Government center on Washington street in Danville. The County commissioners and Sheriff will be presenting citations and thanking all for their help for the past two years. American Legion Post 118 will be honoring our Silent Keys with a 21 gun salute and the playing of Taps. Participating businesses in the community will have food and drink in the lounge on the lower level of the center. Nominations need to be turned in to Dr. Jay Wright, KK9L, or Ken Bandy, KC9GLQ, by October 31st. Contact Jay by email at jay@southwesternelec.com, or by phone at (317) 203-3335. Contact information for Ken Bandy is email at kc9glq@arrl.net, or phone (317) 446-3312. Nominations should include the nominee’s name, call sign if a ham, address or phone number to get in touch with the nominee, as well as what was done to merit the nomination. These recognitions are conferred without prejudice or malice due to race, color, or creed, in the name of, and by the authority of Hendricks County, State of Indiana. []ARTICLE ABOUT W9IMS IN NOVEMBER QST The long-awaited November 2007 QST issue has arrived... and as promised, it contains Brian Smith’s, W9IND, article about Amanda Feriante, AF9YL, the 11 year old extra class operator from California, and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Amateur Radio Club. There are four photos that portray Amanda, her little brother Isaac, Heather Heininger, KB9ZLB, and Johanna Fulk (Trevor's, N9YM, unlicensed -- but radio-savvy -- little sister), not to mention Terri Stacy and Jeff Pigeon of WIBC. By the way, to vote for Brian’s article to win a QST Cover Plaque, point your browser to http://www.arrl.org/members-only/qstvote.html?pidx=0. You must be an ARRL member to vote. []NEW PROCEDURE FOR HAM RADIO LICENSE PLATES As some of you may have already found out, there is a change in the way we can get and renew our ham radio license plates. The plates will need to be reserved for the $8.00 administrative fee in advance, as before. The difference is that the Ham plates will not be available at the local branches any longer. They will all be mailed from the Winchester branch. Thanks to Ron Williams, W9YZ, for this information. [][]WELCOME, NEW MEMBERS Harvey Justice, KC9MBW, Life Member Mike Pruitt, W9HRI Richard Meiss, WB9LPU FEEL FREE TO SHARE OUR NEWSLETTER If you belong to any other radio groups, please feel free to share our newsletter with them. They can also sign up to be on our mailing list by filling out the form available at http://www.indyradioclub.org/rqstnewsletter.htm. [][][]SEND ME YOUR HAM RADIO NEWS If anyone has any items for the newsletter, please send them to Ken Bandy at kc9glq@arrl.net [][]Signals from the Past: >From the January, 1953 Indianapolis Radio Club Amachewer: The state legislature is again now in session and any of you fellows who have been wishing for a bill to allow licensed hams to get their call-signs on their license plates will be interested to know that such plans are being formed again. Come on out to club meetings and contact club director Alvey Pittman, W9JJC, for full details, and learn how you too, may possibly help put this measure across when and if help is needed. [][][]Upcoming Area Radio Events: * Fort Wayne Hamfest Saturday and Sunday, November 17 and 18, 2007, at Fort Wayne. Go to http://www.fortwaynehamfest.com/ for more info Current IRC Officers: · President: Tom Chance, K9XV - ..EMAIL k9xv@arrl.net · Vice Pres.: Dave Miller, K9RTT - ..EMAIL dmiller@ivytech.edu · Secretary: Ken Bandy, KC9GLQ - ..EMAIL kc9glq@arrl.net · Treasurer: Judy Gardner, AA9GW - ..EMAIL aa9gw@juno.com · Chief Operator: Dave Craig, N9QVO - ..EMAIL slough@svs.net · Dir. at large: Bob Osterhous, W9PSE - EMAIL rosterhous@iquest.net · Dir. at large: Tom Price, WB9UNG – EMAIL pricetr@comcast.net · Dir. at large: Hank Wolfla, K9LZJ – EMAIL hwolfla@insightbb.com